There are many applications in which it is necessary to feed documents from a stack of documents. One issue that commonly arises is double feeding, in which two documents are erroneously fed at the same time. Typically, it is desirable to feed only a single document. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a feeder that efficiently feeds documents from a stack of documents without double feeding documents.
Additionally, sorting large stacks of sheets into organized sets of documents can be a time-consuming and tedious process. Many industries create large amounts of documents which need to be separated and organized into desired sets. For instance, insurance companies produce many documents containing policy information. Banks and brokerage firms routinely print client account statements and utility companies print monthly bills to be mailed to customers. Additionally, advertising companies print mass mailings for a large, targeted audience. These documents are often produced in large, unsorted stacks. Quick and efficient sorting is needed to maintain organized files.
When mailing high volumes of documents, it is relatively straight-forward to insert documents into envelopes for mailing. However, when multiple documents need to be inserted into each envelope, document processing becomes more difficult. Creating different sets of documents is often time-consuming, and once the sets are created, the documents must settle to allow the air between the documents to dissipate. These types of delays lead to a bottleneck in production and distribution. In other words, systems that are used to insert the sets of documents into envelopes can insert the documents faster than the sets of documents can be accumulated by a feeder.
Several techniques have developed in attempt to overcome the bottleneck. Some systems incorporate a multi-array system in which numerous machines are used to accumulate sets of documents so that the sets are can be conveyed to a single inserter system. Although such systems have improved through-put, the systems are expensive and bulky. Further, the known systems for feeding sets of documents use rollers to frictionally engage each document in the set. For some applications, the frictional force of the rollers against the documents may cause some damage to the documents.
Accordingly, an apparatus and method are desirable to quickly and accurately organize stacks of sheets into sets of documents.